Center for the Environment

People

Jonathon (Jon) Harbor

Interim C4E Director
jharbor [at] purdue.edu

Professor and Head, Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences,
Interim Director, the Center for Environment and Global Sustainability Initiative
Discovery Park, Purdue University, West Lafayette, Indiana.

Recent Administrative Positions at Purdue University

• Interim Dean (2008-09), Associate Dean for Research (2003-04) and Interim Associate Dean for Graduate Education (2003-04), College of Science.
• Associate Vice President for Research, 2007-08.
• Head of the Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, 2005-06, and Associate Head, 2001-03.
• Founding Co-Director, Discovery Learning Research Center, 2003-05, and Interim Director, 2007-08. 

Jon Harbor is an environmental scientist with research interests that include modeling and managing hydrologic impacts of urban land use change, geologic records of past glaciations in North America, Europe and Asia, and innovative approaches to teaching and learning in environmental science. He currently serves as Head of the Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, and has previously served Purdue as an Associate Vice President for Research, Interim Dean and Associate Dean for Research in the College of Science, and founding co-director of the Discovery Learning Research Center in Discovery Park. He also served as Dean of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at the University of Colorado at Denver and Health Sciences Center.

Harbor is an award-winning undergraduate teacher and graduate student mentor, has an extensive record of external funding for interdisciplinary research and education initiatives, and has co-authored over 100 journal papers and 30 book chapters and conference proceedings papers in environmental science and education research. He earned his PhD in geological sciences from the University of Washington in Seattle in 1990, and has a master's degree in geography from the University of Colorado at Boulder, and a bachelor's degree in geography from the University of Cambridge (U.K.). Harbor joined Purdue in 1994 and is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society, a Fellow of the Purdue Teaching Academy, and served as a Fulbright Senior Scholar in New Zealand in 2000-01. He currently serves as the Earth Surface Processes editor for Earth Science Reviews, and has served on the editorial boards of the journals Geomorphology, Physical Geography, the Journal of Mountain Science, the Journal of Terrestrial Observation, and the Geographical Journal.

• Dr. Jon Harbor Departmental Home Page

Dr. Pankaj Sharma

C4E Managing Director
sharma [at] purdue.edu

Prior to joining Discovery Park, Dr. Sharma was an Associate Director of Purdue’s Rare Isotope Measurement Laboratory at Purdue. He has worked on the application of accelerator mass spectrometry in geological and biomedical tracing. An experimental nuclear physicist with expertise in applications of radioactivity in dating and tracing in geological and biological systems, he has extensively collaborated with scientists from more than 10 countries.

Jill Wable

Administrative Assistant
jwable [at] purdue.edu

The Administrative Advisory Council

(AAC)'s charge is to facilitate linkages to academics units, institutes, and other centers; to identify opportunities and red flags, and to serve as a check and balance. The AAC is selected from faculty serving as department or school heads, center or institute directors, and associate Deans.

Current Members:

• Kathy Banks, Professor and Interim Head of Civil Engineering
• Craig Beyrouty, Professor and Head of Agronomy
• Melba Crawford, Professor of Agronomy and Director the Laboratory for Applications of Remote Sensing
• Jon Harbor , Professor and Head of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences
• Suresh Rao, Lee A. Rieth Distinguished Professor of Civil Engineering
• Rob Swihart, Professor and Head of Forestry and Natural Resources
• Ron Turco, Professor of Agronomy and Director of Indiana Water Resources Research Institute